Fair Game (Alpha & Omega #3)(31)
Author: Patricia Briggs

"No one worth putting themselves at risk for," said Charles.

Beauclaire gave Charles a polite look that was as clear as any adolescent raising his middle finger. "We are not pack. We are not all good friends. Mostly we are polite enemies. When a fae dies, if it is not one of power – who are valuable to us, just because there are so few left – if it is not someone who has family or allies with power, mostly other fae look upon that death with a sigh of relief. First, it was not they who died. Second, it didn’t cause anyone else harm, and that fae is no longer free to make alliances with someone who might be an enemy." His voice deepened just a little on the last sentence.

"It bothers you," said Leslie.

Anna liked competent people. Not many humans were as good at reading others as the wolves were. Leslie was very good to be able to read Beauclaire so well.

Beauclaire looked at the agent, started to say something, hesitated, then said, "Yes, Agent Fisher, it bothers me that a killer was allowed to continue picking off those he chose for nearly half a century. Had I known of it, I would have done something – which was probably why I was not informed. A mistake I have taken steps to correct. What should have been is, in this case, superseded by what is: a killer who tortures his victims before he kills them has my daughter."

"Do you know who or what we are hunting, Mr. Beauclaire?" asked Goldstein. "Is it a fae?"

"Yes. I know what kind of fae could get into a building without leaving a scent trail that a werewolf could follow, and could hide so that people who walked past him could not discern that he was there."

"It is unusual," said Anna. "Most glamour doesn’t work on scent."

"You can’t hide what you don’t perceive," agreed Beauclaire. "Most of the fae who could follow a scent as well as a werewolf were beast-minded – like the giant in ‘Jack and the Beanstalk.’ Those fae couldn’t hide themselves from the cold-iron-carrying Christians who drove us from our homes – so they perished, most of them. But there are a few left who would be capable of perceiving and hiding their scents. Among those who have these abilities, the only one who would also be strong enough to carry my daughter out of her home in a satchel and be mistaken for someone carrying laundry is a horned lord."

Goldstein narrowed his eyes. "The old term for a man who was cuckolded? That’s not what you mean."

"Horned," said Charles. "You mean antlered."

Beauclaire nodded. "Yes."

"Herne the Hunter," suggested Charles.

"Like Herne," agreed Beauclaire. "There were never many of them, less than a handful that I’m aware of. The last one on this side of the Atlantic was killed in 1981, hit by a car in Vermont. The driver thought he killed a very large deer, but the accident was witnessed by one of us who could see the fae inside the deer’s skin. When no one was looking, we stole the body away."

"You think there is another one?" Leslie asked.

The fae nodded. "That is what the evidence suggests."

"If the killer is fae, then why didn’t he start hunting fae victims before the fae came out?" Anna asked.

That the UNSUB was fae would explain why he was still active after so many years, why he could take down a werewolf without anyone noticing. But it didn’t explain why he began targeting fae only after they admitted their existence.

"I am not the killer to know his motivations, Ms. Smith," said Beauclaire. He bit off the "Smith" to show that he knew what their last name really was – still jockeying for top dog in the room. "Coincidences do happen."

"Call me Anna," she told him in a friendly voice. "Most people do."

He stared at her a moment. Charles growled and the fae jerked his eyes off of hers, then frowned in irritation at losing the upper hand. But Anna could feel the whole atmosphere of the living room lighten up as the fight for dominance was lost and won.

Beauclaire gave a bow of his head to Charles, then smiled at Anna, and she thought that she’d never seen such a sad expression in her life. In that look she understood what he was doing and why – he thought his daughter was lost, she saw. He hadn’t, not when they were at his daughter’s apartment, but something – maybe that the killer was fae – had changed his mind. He was hunting her killer now, not trying to save his daughter. Perhaps that was why he’d given in to Charles so easily.

"Coincidence," Beauclaire admitted, "is highly overrated. I have an alternative explanation about how a fae could not know what he was until he knew that there were such things as fae."

He glanced around the room, but Anna couldn’t tell what he was looking for.

"In the height of the Victorian era," Beauclaire said finally, in a quiet, calm voice that belied what her nose told her, "when iron horses crossed and crisscrossed Europe, several things became obvious. There was no longer a place for the fae in the old world – and we were too few. From 1908 until just a few years ago, it was the policy of the Gray Lords, those who rule the fae, to find fae of scarce but useful types and force them to marry and interbreed with humans since humans breed so much more rapidly than we do."

Anna knew about that, but she hadn’t realized how long it had gone on. From Leslie’s face, Anna was pretty sure that the FBI agent hadn’t known about the crossbreeding policy. That was interesting, because her face hadn’t changed at all when Beauclaire had mentioned the Gray Lords, who were also a deep secret.

Goldstein might have been listening to the weather report for all the change in his face. There was no telling what he knew or didn’t know about the fae.

"It was believed," continued Beauclaire, "that humans were of weaker bloodlines and the fae blood would prevail – and humans breed so very easily, even with the fae for a partner." He closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath. "The wisdom of these forced interbreedings is now being reexamined. Half-blood fae face many challenges. They, for the most part, are not accepted by the other fae. And too many of them exhibit…odd properties – birth defects are very high. Once fathered or mothered, a high percentage of the halflings were abandoned by their fae parent altogether, which left them to discover who and what they were on their own – to sometimes disastrous results. And a large number of the children have turned out to be entirely human."

Charles sat back. "Like your daughter?" he said in a soft voice.

"Like my daughter. The only thing she gets from me is my mother’s love of dance – and she has to train hours every day to do what my mother did effortlessly." Beauclaire looked down, then back at Charles. "You are old, but not so old as your father. Maybe you can understand why I fought this dictate as hard as anything I’ve ever fought against. To deceive a human woman for the purpose of fathering a child upon her…it is dishonorable. Yes. And yet it gave me someone I care deeply about."